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Child-directed speech has long been known to influence children’s vocabulary learning. However, while we know that caregiver utterances differ from those directed at adults in various ways, little is known about any differences in the lexical properties of child-directed and adult-directed utterances. We compare over half a million word tokens from adult speech directed at children (from caregiver–child transcriptions) to the same quantity directed at adults. We show that child-directed speech contains greater numbers of words that are lower in phonemic length, higher in frequency, lower in phonotactic probability, and higher in neighborhood density than adult-directed speech; furthermore, child-directed speech explains over twice the variability of children’s productive noun vocabularies than adult-directed speech. These findings indicate that children’s word production is clearly influenced by the characteristics of the words spoken directly to them and that researchers need to be wary of using adult-directed language corpora when calculating lexical measures.

A strong predictor of children’s language is performance on non-word repetition (NWR) tasks. However, the basis of this relationship remains unknown. Some suggest that NWR tasks measure phonological working memory, which then affects language growth. Others argue that children’s knowledge of language/language experience affects NWR performance. A complicating factor is that most studies focus on school-aged children, who have already mastered key language skills. Here, we present a new NWR task for English-learning 2 year olds, use it to assess the effect of NWR performance on concurrent and later language development, and compare the children’s performance with that of an experience-based computational model (CLASSIC). The new NWR task produced reliable results, replicating wordlikeness effects, word-length effects, and the relationship with concurrent and later language ability we see in older children. The model (CLASSIC) also simulated all effects, suggesting that the relationship between language and NWR performance can be explained by language experience-/knowledge-based theories.

Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIPing) – Powder Metallurgy has been used by Rolls-Royce to successfully manufacture nuclear pressure boundary components such as valves, piping, and pump casings; the majority of these components being manufactured in stainless steels, typically 316L. Rolls-Royce has pioneered the use of this technology in the nuclear field in order to provide cost and lead-time reductions. Rolls-Royce considers there to be significant potential benefits in applying the HIP process, together with Thick Section Electron Beam Welding (TSEBW), to the manufacture of large Low Alloy Steel (LAS) pressure vessels. These benefits would include cost savings, lead-time reductions, an increase in the material quality, and improved inspectability of the as-manufactured material. TSEBW offers the opportunity to dramatically reduce vessel section welding time, and, as no filler material is used, the potential to have a weld microstructure very similar to the parent material, thus providing the opportunity to eliminate through-life vessel weld inspections to reduce plant in-service costs. Production cost and timescale reductions are of particular interest with large vessel manufacture being a most significant contributor to the overall cost and manufacturing time of primary nuclear plant; this against a backdrop of the industry striving to drive down the cost of nuclear power generation in order to ensure viability with other forms of power generation. Applying the HIP process to LAS materials presents particular challenges due to the propensity for oxygen pick-up during the powder manufacturing stage, or in subsequent filling and processing operations. The potential for oxide formation on powder particles presents a risk to the material properties being adversely affected, particularly a material’s fracture toughness, which is critical to the structural integrity of nuclear pressure vessels. Previously, Rolls-Royce has shown it is possible to achieve enhanced tensile properties compared to wrought equivalent material, and to meet the specified Charpy impact toughness requirements. However, under certain conditions, i.e. relatively high oxygen levels in the HIP powder, the Charpy impact toughness was found to be 66% of typical wrought material at room temperature. This paper presents further material testing work conducted by Rolls-Royce to assess any improvement in material property results when the potential for oxygen ingress in the process is reduced. This paper also presents the latest HIP vessel demonstrator work that Rolls-Royce has conducted to assess the viability of the technology to achieve vessel geometries. Of note is the production of a Small Vessel Demonstrator, which, to the best of Rolls-Royce’s knowledge, is the first of a kind HIPed, TSEB welded, LAS, high integrity pressure vessel with integral cladding. Achieving integral cladding by the HIP process has the potential to provide significant cost and time savings by deleting time consuming fusion techniques and machining operations. A Large Vessel Demonstrator section has also been manufactured and successfully EB welded. The paper concludes that although meeting material property specification requirements, further work is required to improve the Charpy impact toughness of HIPed LAS material to achieve similar values to the forged equivalent. Although some improvement in toughness was observed at sub-zero temperatures by reducing the potential for oxygen pick-up in the powder filling process, improvements might be best achieved by focusing on reducing the initial oxygen content of the powder stock, i.e. striving for oxygen levels far lower than 200ppm. It also concludes, that although achieving large-scale vessel geometry is considered feasible, further development work is required in order to achieve near net/net shape vessel geometry to incorporate integral cladding and/or minimising general planar machining operations. This is in the field of preventing geometric imperfections by ensuring a high powder packing density by focusing on the HIP can powder filling process and the powder morphology and particle size distribution, and also possibly can design/manufacture. EB welding has, in the main, been successful, but further work is required to optimise the EB parameters, particularly with beam retraction to prevent the generation of defects.

This paper presents the work conducted by Rolls-Royce to investigate the mechanical and metallurgical properties of a Low Alloy Steel (LAS) grade 508 alloy batch of material. The material was manufactured using the Powder Metallurgy – Hot Isostatic Pressing (PM-HIP) method. The LAS was an ASME 508 4N model alloy. Rolls-Royce has used PM-HIP extensively for the manufacture of nuclear grade components such as valves, piping and pump bowls, and is now investigating its use for the manufacture of LAS pressure vessels in order to provide an alternative sourcing route to forgings to reduce costs and manufacturing lead-times. A key part of this work is to assess whether mechanical properties can be achieved that meet the specification requirements and that are also comparable to the forged equivalent. In this regard, the toughness of the material is of particular interest, with it being extremely important for LAS pressure vessel applications. This paper reports, that for this particular batch of material, the Charpy toughness was significantly below the minimum room temperature specification requirement, but that the tensile properties were well above the minimum specification requirements for proof and ultimate tensile strength. The Charpy toughness at room temperature was only at 38% of the specification requirement, and only at 21% of forged equivalent material. The reason for the poor Charpy results is potentially attributed to prior austenite retention given the highly faceted nature of the fracture faces and the size of the facet faces. Oxides and other precipitates, such as nitrides, are not believed to have significantly contributed to the low Charpy values in this powder batch. This is because inclusion assessments against other powder HIP material, which had exhibited higher Charpy values but produced with higher oxygen content, did not show a significantly different variation in non-metallic inclusion count, and there was no clear evidence of prior particle boundaries being evident in the cross-sectional studies of the microstructure. Hence, it is hypothesised that increased prior austenite formation was due to the increased nitrogen levels in the gas atomised powder.

Although fine particulate matter (PM

The Permian Basin of west Texas spans two major subbasins — the Midland Basin and the Delaware Basin. Both basins contain Wolfcampian- to Leonardian-age turbidites that form thick sections of prolific unconventional reservoirs. For the past several years, the most active drilling targets in the United States have been the Wolfberry turbidite interval of the Midland Basin and the Wolfbone turbidite interval in the Delaware Basin. We have used two new technologies to examine the internal architecture and fabric of a thick interval of these unconventional drilling targets with seismic reflection seismology. First, we used seismic interpretation software that uses unsupervised machine learning (ML), so that a higher level of detail could be extracted from seismic images. Second, we complemented our P-P imaging of Wolfberry turbidites with a new seismic imaging option, that being SV-P (or converted-P) imaging. Because vertical vibrators, particularly arrays of vertical vibrators, produce downgoing P and downgoing SV illuminating wavefields, SV-P reflections can usually be extracted from the same vertical-geophone responses as are P-P reflections. The combination of these two images essentially doubles the amount of information that can be extracted from data generated by P sources and recorded with vertical geophones. SV-P imaging with P sources has been ignored by reflection seismologists for decades, so we felt an obligation to illustrate the value of this ignored seismic mode. These two new tools — SV-P imaging and interpreting P-P and SV-P images via unsupervised ML — expanded our insights into the internal architecture and fabric of Wolfberry turbidites. Our work provides interpreters a much-needed example of applying unsupervised ML technology in a joint interpretation of P- and S-wave data.

STUDY QUESTIONCan risks associated with novelties in assisted reproduction technologies (ARTs) be assessed in a systematic and structured way?SUMMARY ANSWERAn ART-specific risk assessment tool has been developed to assess the risks associated with the development of novelties in ART (EuroGTP II-ART).WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADYHow to implement new technologies in ART is well-described in the literature. The successive steps should include testing in animal models, executing pre-clinical studies using supernumerary gametes or embryos, prospective clinical trials and finally, short- and long-term follow-up studies on the health of the offspring. A framework categorizing treatments from experimental through innovative to established according to the extent of the studies conducted has been devised. However, a systematic and standardized methodology to facilitate risk evaluation before innovations are performed in a clinical setting is lacking.STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATIONThe EuroGTP II-ART risk assessment tool was developed on the basis of a generic risk assessment algorithm developed for tissue and cell therapies and products (TCTPs) in the context of the project ‘Good Practices for demonstrating safety and quality through recipient follow-up European Good Tissue and cells Practices II (EuroGTP II)’. For this purpose, a series of four meetings was held in which eight ART experts participated. In addition, several tests and simulations were undertaken to fine-tune the final tool.PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODSThe three steps comprising the EuroGTP II methodology were evaluated against its usefulness and applicability in ART. Ways to improve and adapt the methodology into ART risk assessment were agreed and implemented.MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCEAssessment of the novelty (Step 1), consisting of seven questions, is the same as for other TCTPs. Practical examples were included for better understanding. Identification of potential risks and consequences (Step 2), consisting of a series of risks and risk consequences to consider during risk assessment, was adapted from the generic methodology, adding more potential risks for processes involving gonadic tissues. The algorithm to score risks was also adapted, giving a specific range of highest possible risk scores. A list of strategies for risk reduction and definition of extended studies required to ensure effectiveness and safety (Step 3) was also produced by the ART experts, based on generic EuroGTP II methodology. Several explanations and examples were provided for each of the steps for better understanding within this field.LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTIONA multidisciplinary team is needed to perform risk assessment, to interpret results and to determine risk mitigation strategies and/or next steps required to ensure the safety in the clinical use of novelties.WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGSThis is a dynamic tool whose value goes beyond assessment of risk before implementing a novel ART in clinical practice, to re-evaluate risks based on information collected during the process.STUDY FUNDING / COMPETING INTEREST(S)This study was called EUROGTP II and was funded by the European Commission (Grant agreement number 709567). The authors declare no competing interests concerning the results of this study.

Introduction: Depression and anxiety symptoms are highly prevalent in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and are commonly associated with schizotypy in non-clinical samples. However, it remains unclear what factors could be contributing to the relationships between schizotypy and anxiety and depression symptoms. Using path analysis, we explored the complex interplay between schizotypy, metacognitive beliefs, cognitive insight, and symptoms of emotional distress. Methods: Self-report data of schizotypy, metacognitive beliefs, cognitive insight, depression, and anxiety symptoms were collected from 344 participants from a predominantly student sample. Results: Path analysis confirmed unique associations between schizotypy dimensions, metacognitive beliefs, and cognitive insight. Furthermore, negative beliefs about worry mediated the link between the schizotypy dimensions, unusual experiences, cognitive disorganisation, and introvertive anhedonia and both depression and anxiety symptoms. Lack of cognitive confidence also mediated the relationship between cognitive disorganisation and depression symptoms. Finally, the cognitive insight subcomponent self-reflectiveness mediated the relationship between unusual experiences and cognitive disorganisation and anxiety. Conclusions: This study significantly furthers our understanding of the complex relationship between schizotypy, metacognitive processes, and emotional distress. Our findings also provide support for interventions which modify metacognitive beliefs and self-reflectiveness, which may prove beneficial for treatment in clinical settings.

HIV epidemics in the EU and European Economic Area are increasingly diverse in transmission modes and groups affected. Substantial gaps in data exist on HIV burden and access to the HIV continuum of care among migrants living in this region, particularly individuals in precarious circumstances such as migrants with irregular status. Migrants have a higher HIV burden compared with the general population, and high rates of post-migration HIV acquisition. Migrants also face challenges in access to health and HIV services, with irregular migrants, foreign-born key populations such as men who have sex with men, sex workers, and people who inject drugs, and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa being most affected. Intersecting factors negatively affect their access to services along the full continuum of care, including prevention and psychosocial services. Ensuring equitable access to general health and HIV services, regardless of immigration status, and implementing interventions to reduce stigma and discrimination are crucial to ending AIDS by 2030.

We know that 8-month-old infants track the statistical properties of a series of syllables and that 2- and 3-year-old children process familiar phrases more efficiently than unfamiliar phrases, but less is known about the intermediary level of two-word sequences. In Study 1, 2-year-olds (N = 45, mean age = 651 days) heard two-word sequences consisting of a prime word followed by a noun, with two pictures appearing on the screen (depicting the noun and a distractor). Eye tracking showed that children looked more quickly at the noun picture for two-word sequences occurring an average of 19 times per million and 206 times per million in child-directed speech than for novel sequences. In Study 2, corpus analyses showed that 2-year-olds’ noun learning increased in line with the frequency of the two-word sequence that preceded it in caregiver speech utterances. This effect holds even after controlling nouns for frequency in caregiver speech, phonemic length, neighborhood density, phonotactic probability, and concreteness and after removing nouns produced in isolation by caregivers and nouns produced by children before being produced by caregivers. These studies show that young children’s language processing is facilitated by known two-word sequences, allowing children to focus on more novel aspects of the utterance. Such efficiencies are far-reaching because nearly two thirds of child-directed utterances contain two-word sequences with frequencies of 19 or more per million.

Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIPing) has been used by Rolls-Royce to successfully manufacture nuclear plant components such as valves, piping, and pump casings; the majority of these components being manufactured from stainless steels, typically 316L. There are also considered to be potentially significant benefits to be gained by manufacturing large nuclear plant pressure vessels via the HIP process, such vessels commonly being manufactured from Low Alloy Steel (LAS) materials such as ASME SA-508. The benefits would include cost and lead-time reductions, which are particularly pertinent in relation to the competiveness of the power generation market and future nuclear power plant construction. Such vessels are a major cost and are critical path items of the primary plant. Also, material quality improvements and improved inspectability are possible via the HIP process. Welding vessel sections together using Thick-Section Electron Beam Welding (TSEBW) shows significant promise in reducing welding time and the provision of high quality welds, further reducing vessel cost and lead-time. There is also the potential with the use of TSEBW, to reduce weld inspection requirements with the weld being effectively the same as the parent material, i.e. no weld filler material is used. This paper presents an overview of the pioneering work conducted and planned by Rolls-Royce to develop a method of manufacture to combine HIPing and TSEBW to produce nuclear plant pressure vessels. Staged development is covered, starting with small billet manufacture for the purposes of material testing and examination, followed by vessel demonstrators for the purposes of proving the method of manufacture and to provide justification data, e.g. examination, pressure and thermal cyclic test data. In order to provide a balanced perspective, the paper also identifies the key challenges — risks, and capability development requirements necessary to deliver this method of manufacture.

The existing protein annotation in chicken is mostly limited to computational predictions based on orthology to other proteins, which often leads to a significant underestimation of the function of these proteins. Genome-scale experimental annotation can provide insight into the actual enzymatic activities of chicken proteins. Amongst post-translational modifications, ubiquitination is of interest as anomalies in ubiquitination are implicated in such diseases as inflammatory disorders, infectious diseases, or malignancies. Ubiquitination is controlled by deubiquitinases (DUBs), which remove ubiquitin from protein substrates. However, the DUBs have not been systematically annotated and quantified in chicken tissues. Here we used a chemoproteomics approach, which is based on active-site probes specific to DUBs, and identified 26 active DUBs in the chicken spleen, cecum, and liver.

Studies using tests such as digit span and nonword repetition have implicated short-term memory across a range of developmental domains. Such tests ostensibly assess specialized processes for the short-term manipulation and maintenance of information that are often argued to enable long-term learning. However, there is considerable evidence for an influence of long-term linguistic learning on performance in short-term memory tasks that brings into question the role of a specialized short-term memory system separate from long-term knowledge. Using natural language corpora, we show experimentally and computationally that performance on three widely used measures of short-term memory (digit span, nonword repetition, and sentence recall) can be predicted from simple associative learning operating on the linguistic environment to which a typical child may have been exposed. The findings support the broad view that short-term verbal memory performance reflects the application of long-term language knowledge to the experimental setting.

The tuning-bed thickness or vertical resolution of seismic data traditionally is based on the frequency content of the data and the associated wavelet. Seismic interpretation of thin beds routinely involves estimation of tuning thickness and the subsequent scaling of amplitude or inversion information below tuning. These traditional below-tuning-thickness estimation approaches have limitations and require assumptions that limit accuracy. The below-tuning effects are a result of the interference of wavelets, which are a function of the geology as it changes vertically and laterally. However, numerous instantaneous attributes exhibit effects at and below tuning, but these are seldom incorporated in thin-bed analyses. A seismic multiattribute approach employs self-organizing maps to identify natural clusters from combinations of attributes that exhibit below-tuning effects. These results may exhibit changes as thin as a single sample interval in thickness. Self-organizing maps employed in this fashion analyze associated seismic attributes on a sample-by-sample basis and identify the natural patterns or clusters produced by thin beds. This thin-bed analysis utilizing self-organizing maps has been corroborated with extensive well control to verify consistent results. Therefore, thin beds identified with this methodology enable more accurate mapping of facies below tuning and are not restricted by traditional frequency limitations.

Such is the consistency by which performance on measures of short-term memory (STM) increase with age that developmental increases in STM capacity are largely accepted as fact. However, our analysis of a robust but almost ignored finding – that span for digit sequences (the traditional measure of STM) increases at a far greater rate than span for other verbal material – fundamentally undermines the assumption that increased performance in STM tasks is underpinned by developmental increases in capacity. We show that this digit superiority with age effect is explained by the relatively greater linguistic exposure to random sequences of digits versus other stimuli such as words. A simple associative learning process that learns incrementally from exposure to language accounts for the effect, without any need to invoke an STM mechanism, much less one that increases in capacity with age. By extension, using corpus data directed at 2-3 year old children, 4-6 year old children, and adults, we show that age-related performance increases with other types of verbal material are equally driven by the same basic associative learning process operating on the expanding exposure to language experienced by the child. Our results question the idea that tests such as digit span are measuring a dedicated system for the temporary maintenance and manipulation of verbal material, and as such have implications for our understanding of those aspects of typical and atypical development that are usually accounted for with respect to the operation of such a system.

Despite numerous efforts to align educational practice more closely with findings from educational research, there is little clarity about how educational practitioners can, in principle, use research. We propose a conceptualisation based on how research can contribute to practitioners’ thinking: specifically, our framework proposes that research can inform bounded decision-making, teachers’ reflection, and organisational learning. Practitioners can also use research without being aware that they are doing so. We argue that this conceptualisation of research use has potential to inform researchers and practitioners.

Nonword repetition (NWR) is highly predictive of vocabulary size, has strong links to language and reading ability, and is a clinical marker of language impairment. However, it is unclear what processes provide major contributions to NWR performance. This paper presents a computational model of NWR based on Chunking Lexical and Sub-lexical Sequences in Children (CLASSIC) that focuses on the child’s exposure to language when learning lexical phonological knowledge. Based on language input aimed at 2–6year old children, CLASSIC shows a substantial fit to children’s NWR performance for 6 different types of NWR test across 6 different NWR studies that use children of various ages from 2;1 to 6;1. Furthermore, CLASSIC’s repetitions of individual nonwords correlate significantly with children’s repetitions of the same nonwords, NWR performance shows strong correlations to vocabulary size, and interaction effects seen in the model are consistent with those found in children. Such a fit to the data is achieved without any need for developmental parameters, suggesting that between the ages of two and six years, NWR performance measures the child’s current level of linguistic knowledge that arises from their exposure to language over time and their ability to extract lexical phonological knowledge from that exposure.